January 4, 2025 to January 6, 2025
Marooned in Kansas
With the winter storm brewing to the west, the smart play would have been to leave a day earlier, but I planned a holiday bash with my biking group last night. It seemed like a reasonable idea when we set the date back in September.
I wouldn’t miss it. Six years ago I joined the Women’s Cycling Community of Greater St. Louis, a mouthful also known as the WC2. We have a neat bunch of leaders who post rides on our Meetup.com page. I've met wonderful cycling friends through the group, and discovered new routes to ride with these women.
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We welcomed five new members at the party and played Bike Bingo to get acquainted. Our task was to roam the room and find someone who has ridden in the rain, camped out on a ride, had a car rack mishap, or any of 21 other cycling adventures on our Bingo cards. People brought in used bike gear for the swap table and shared ideas for events this year.
I often feel a sense of disconnection when we get back home from a long bike tour. These women make up part of the gravitational field that keeps me tethered to St. Louis.
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While I partied, Barry loaded up all the bikes and made sure the car and RV were ready to roll. All the party prep stacked on top of packing the car and the camper for a three-month trip ran me ragged this week. It was worth it.
Saturday
Considering all that needed to be done before we could leave, we're getting a decent start at 8:30 this morning. The drive through Missouri goes well until we approach Kansas City. Now as the skies darken and start dropping sleet on us, we can see the storm front moving in on the weather map. As we drive into Kansas the sleet escalates, and by the time we reach Topeka the windshield is icing up. Time to quit for the day.
Comfort Suites west of town looks like a decent place to ride out the storm, and the back lot is big enough to park our rig. We pull in at 3:30 and are glad to be inside as the sleet morphs into snow. The forecast calls for more than a foot of the stuff. We might be here for awhile.
The RV isn’t made for winter camping but is stocked with freezer meals. This is handy since the restaurants are closed. Unfortunately the pasta with sausage and peppers that I pull out and defrost hasn’t aged well. The noodles are mushy, but it’s food, and more appealing than the microwave mac & cheese at the hotel snack bar.
Sunday
As I peek out the window this morning, heavy snow falls on 6 inches already on the ground. Outside our window a stiff wind is blowing the white stuff sideways. KanDrive.com's road map shows “Closed” signs all along I-70 from Topeka to Goodland. We’re not driving anywhere today.
After breakfast we check out the back parking lot where a snowplow is starting to pile up snow around the car and the camper. With the forecast for snow continuing through the day, Barry is wondering if we're going to need a shovel to dig it out.
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Besides digging out our tires so we can leave, the shovel sounds like a good thing to have in the car whenever we get going again. Home Depot is less than a mile away and they have plenty of shovels in stock, so we put the ski gear to use and walk over. With the wind behind us the hike to the store isn’t too bad. It’s brutal coming back though.
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Any port in a storm will do, but this place really is a very nice place to ride it out. Our room has a comfortable living area, a good desk for writing and plenty of space to roll out my yoga mat. The hotel has a decent hot breakfast, a fruit bowl they keep stocked all day, and a fitness room with a bike. We have no difficulty passing the time here. To be honest, it's nice to have a day with no agenda.
We're on our own for dinner again. When we hiked to the hardware store this morning all the restaurants we passed were closed, so I go out to raid the RV freezer again and pull out some chili. It's way better than dinner last night.
Around 6:00 the snow finally moves off to the east. Topeka got 14 inches since the storm started yesterday, not quite the record here but close. How long it will be before we can leave safely is anybody's guess.
Monday
This morning KanDrive reports that I-70 is still closed for 130 miles west of here. Steve, a friend in Salina, checks in and says its good we stopped when we did. They got slammed Saturday afternoon.
There's been progress though. The highway is open west of Hays KS. Depending on how the road crews do it's possible we might get to drive part of the way this afternoon. We don't have much hope of making our flight from Denver to Portland Tuesday, but maybe we could break up the 527 mile trip to Denver. That's a long day when we're pulling the camper, especially if we have to drive slower than the usual 60 mph.
Montana, the sweet manager at the desk, gives us until 1:00 to check out so we can keep our options open. Barry heads out with the shovel to clear the path and succeeds in moving the car and RV a couple times so the guy in the pickup with the snowplow blade can finish clearing the lot.
Alas, 1:00 comes and goes with no improvement in the highway report. We settle in for another night. That makes it three nights in Kansas – two more than planned. Still, we're safe and warm. No complaints.
On the bright side, the roads are finally open at 3:30 and the car is ready to roll. Also, across the street, Hooters is open so we get a break from freezer meals.
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2 days ago
I enjoy reading about your cycling adventures. Thanks for sharing 🙂🚲☀️
Cheryl K
23 hours ago